Simone Pepe

Simone Pepe: Four Scudetti and Twenty Minutes

Juventus won the 2012-13 Serie A title. Simone Pepe played twenty minutes of it. His single appearance came in a Coppa Italia tie against Lazio in November, from which the club's own retrospective salvages one detail: seven crosses delivered from the right flank. He would collect four consecutive Italian championship medals between 2012 and 2015, and spend nearly two of those years unable to walk properly. Juventus called him an invaluable member of the squad anyway, and meant it.

Albano Laziale

Pepe was born on 30 August 1983 in Albano Laziale, in the hills south of Rome, and came through at Roma without ever playing for them — loaned instead to the amateur clubs Calcio Lecco 1912 and Teramo. In the summer of 2003 Palermo bought a co-ownership share in him for five hundred euros. That figure is not a typo; it is how Italian football priced an unproven 19-year-old winger. He made 19 appearances and scored once as Palermo won Serie B and promotion in 2003-04, went to Piacenza on loan in July 2004 for game time, and returned permanently in June 2005 after Roma sold their remaining stake.

Making a Career

Udinese took him in a co-ownership deal worth five hundred thousand euros midway through 2005-06, then loaned him to Cagliari in July 2006. There he scored his first top-flight goal — on 18 November 2006, in the ninetieth minute, against Palermo. Udinese bought him outright in June 2007 and he became their first-choice winger after Kwadwo Asamoah's injury. That spell earned him an Italy call-up: he debuted on 11 October 2008 in a World Cup qualifier against Bulgaria, and would win 23 caps between 2008 and 2011. He played at the 2009 Confederations Cup and started all three group matches at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa, tournaments in which Italy went out early on both occasions.

Turin

On 9 June 2010 Juventus took him on loan for 2.6 million euros with an option at 7.5 million — arriving, as it happened, at the beginning of the club's reconstruction. He scored five goals in 30 matches in his first season. In 2011-12, under Antonio Conte, he formed what Italian reporting called an efficient right-flank partnership with the newly signed Stephan Lichtsteiner, contributing six league goals and two assists as Juventus went unbeaten to the title. They nicknamed him Speedy Pepe and compared him to the former Juventus stalwart Angelo Di Livio — a comparison that says everything about the type: relentless, unglamorous, adored by the ultras.

Then it stopped. From December 2012 he suffered a cascade of injuries, underwent surgery on 27 February 2013, and did not return until 18 December that year. Muscular problems recurred through 2014. He did not score again for three years — until a penalty against Napoli on 23 May 2015. He was, by then, a squad member on four straight championship sides, a Supercoppa Italiana winner in 2012 and 2013, a Coppa Italia winner in 2014-15 after finishing runner-up in 2011-12, and a Champions League runner-up in 2014-15.

He left for Chievo Verona on a free transfer on 11 August 2015, made 23 appearances and was released. A one-year deal with Pescara followed on 22 August 2016; he retired at 33 and moved into a role on the club's staff. His Serie A career finished at 251 games and 31 goals across twelve seasons. During the calcioscommesse investigations he was accused of failing to report an alleged fix of a 3-3 draw against Bari in May 2010; he denied it and was acquitted of all charges in August 2012.

Why Simone Is Called a Genius

He is not, in any serious sense, and the honest version of this section says so. Pepe was never described as a great footballer by people who watched football closely, and the sources record no coach, critic or team-mate applying the word to him. Thirty-one goals in 251 Serie A appearances is a modest return; his four Scudetti belonged to a squad he was frequently not fit to play in.

What he had instead is worth naming precisely, because it is the quality that keeps players in elite dressing rooms without talent. First, positional intelligence of a specific kind: he began as a forward and was rebuilt into a wide midfielder, a right winger, an attacking midfielder and a wing-back, and could be dropped into any of them without the shape of the team suffering. That requires learning four different defensive maps, not just four attacking ones. Second, work-rate as a tactical instrument. His documented attributes — stamina, defensive contribution, crossing — are precisely the set Conte's 3-5-2 needed on the right, where one player had to cover the whole touchline. Lichtsteiner's freedom to overlap was purchased with Pepe's running. Third, and least measurable, the thing Juventus themselves emphasised: a sunny character that kept him a valued presence in the squad through two years of injury, urging team-mates on from the touchline while he rehabilitated.

Call that professional intelligence rather than genius. It is the reason a player bought for five hundred euros ended up with four championship medals, and it is not nothing — but stretching the word to fit him would insult both him and the players it properly describes.

Legacy

Pepe is a useful corrective to how football history gets written. He arrived at Juventus in the year they finished seventh and left having won four titles in a row; he was a starter for the first of them and a bystander for two more. The Italian game has a name for his kind — *il giocatore di fatica*, the labour player — and it is not an insult. His twelve Serie A seasons, 23 Italy caps and a World Cup on the pitch in Johannesburg were built on stamina, adaptability and an unusually good attitude to being injured. Juventus, who could have forgotten him, still describe the effervescent Roman as invaluable.

Achievements

• Worked as association football player